When in a pinch and rolling with an anti-Walmart crowd, the next best thing is Walgreen's. I managed to come here during a hot afternoon with a few friends attempting to escape the heat while managing to score some much needed items: water, sunglasses, lotion, and gum.
The parking lot wasn't crowded, in fact for being the 4th largest city in the US, nothing seems crowded in Phoenix. Desert climate and all, this is one of the most wide open city spaces in America and this Walgreens is just another dot on the venue map.
So away we go into this souped up convenience store. First thing worth embracing? Air conditioning. Lots of wonderful, carbon footprint inducing, cold air producing air conditioning. It felt nice to just peruse the store walking around as if I wasn't buying anything.
The staff was friendly and did their best to help us find what we needed. They even had us line up in a different line than the main one out front (#1).
The prices didn't seem to bad. Then I saw the sales tax. It's almost 10%? Someone deport me back to Oregon / New York.
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(#1) Arizona might be a conservative state, and yes they have the jacked up immigration law, but this was hardly a segregated line. Or .... was it?